(ATR) The Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) team is projected to take home eight medals from the PyeongChang Winter Games.
That’s according to calculations by Gracenote, which released its final Virtual Medal Table predictions on Wednesday, just two days before the Opening Ceremony in South Korea.
The IOC revealed on Tuesday that all but one of the 169 Russians invited to participate on the neutral OAR team will be competing in PyeongChang. But a number of projected medalists have not been permitted to take part. In fact, Gracenote has lowered its forecast medal totals from 20 to only eight following the IOC decision on who would be on the OAR team.
The OAR team's total could be affected by a pair of pending cases before the Court of Arbitration for Sport concerning a further 45 Russian athletes who are appealing an IOC decision to keep them out of the PyeongChang Games.
Simon Gleave, the head of analysis at Gracenote, tells Around the Rings that six of the 45 athletes appealing are projected to win medals in individual events if they are allowed to compete. With an additional biathlon relay silver medal thrown in, the OAR team could end up with an additional nine medals if all the potential medalists are allowed in.
As it stands now, Norway is expected to benefit most by the Russian absences, adding five of the 12 medals lost by OAR. Germany and Switzerland pick up an additional two medals each while France, the Netherlands and the USA add one more.
The additional handful of medals for Norway could help that country edge out Germany in the battle for top spot on the medal table. The Norwegians hold the current edge in overall medals by 41 to 39 while the Germans are expected to win one more gold medal, 14 to 13.
Norway has never won more than 26 medals in any Olympic Games, so it seems a certainty that a new Norwegian record will be set in PyeongChang. Norway is forecast to take home 17 medals in cross country skiing alone, four more than the current Olympic record of 13 set by the Soviet Union at the 1988 Winter Games.
Germany’s projection of 39 total medals would be the most since winning 36 at Salt Lake City in 2002. The German team should stand out in biathlon, where it is projected to win nine medals.
The United States is projected to finish third on the overall medals table with 29 and is expected to benefit most from its female competitors. American women are expected to win 18 of the USA’s 29 medals, or 62 percent. Three other medals forecast for the USA come in mixed events.
Canada and France are expected to round out the top five on the total medals table.
Two athletes, both competing in biathlon, are forecast to win six medals. In the case of Laura Dahlmeier of Germany, all six are now expected to be gold after the withdrawal of her biggest rival in the sprint event, Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic.
Martin Fourcade of France could find himself in all three places on the podium for his six medals. He is forecast to win three golds, two silvers and a bronze.
Gracenote’s Virtual Medal Table is based on results in world class events (Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cups or equivalent) from the Sochi Olympics up until now. The results are weighted for the importance of the competition (World Championship results get more credit in the algorithm than World Cup results) and the time since the competition took place (a result from last week gets more credit than a result from three years ago, for example).
If a sport has very few data points or is dominated by a single continent, continental championships are also included in the calculation. Gracenote’s algorithm produces a rank for each event and gold, silver and bronze medals are allocated to the top three in that rank. All of that information then feeds into the Virtual Medal Table for PyeongChang 2018.
For the full table and more information on how Gracenote reached its conclusions, click here.
Written by Gerard Farekin PyeongChang.
For general comments or questions,click here.
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